The company that founded the first UnScripted Shakespeare Festival in New York City takes the Edinburgh Fringe by rambunctious, rhyming, pentametered storm.
New York based improv company Thorn and Petal Stick has been quick to show what they’ve got up their lacey Elizabethan sleeves at this year’s Fringe. And the pleasantest non-surprise of any deliciously good improv show? It’s different every night.
An unassuming company of four – fronted by actors Hal Munger and Nick Zimmerman, scored by musical virtuoso Sebastian Hochman, and designed and lit by Sasha Sokolova – Thorn and Petal Stick founded the first UnScripted Shakespeare Festival in New York. They’ve arrived in Edinburgh to pull all the plugs on a seemingly infinite jug of dramatic and downright silly fun. It’s honestly a relief that you can just wait twenty-four hours and watch these no-frills geniuses tear the house down all over again.
The real cherry on top of a ridiculously talented team of improvisers is that they do the whole thing in iambic pentameter. Over the course of an hour, the audience is subjected not only to the clopping dee-dums of ten-syllable verse lines but also shared lines, rhyming couplets, and even musical diddies. It really is spectacular work that makes you wonder if you haven’t just stumbled on a hidden gem of an act in the buzzing hive of late-night Fringe.
Sokolova’s set – a simple canvas littered with as-yet-unimbued objects – keeps the actors happily on their toes in a garden of rich prop-portunities. Likewise, her improvised lighting designs keep the story pummeling along, integral to marking the beginnings and ends of each improvisational chapter. Hochman – legs leisurely crossed in his corner of musical instruments – hilariously assumes the role of the omniscient town crier, often openly mocking his friends’ iambic stumbles and dressing each scene in its own tonally unique score so effortlessly, you wonder what he’d be capable of if he scooched his music-making station centre-stage.
The show comes fresh off of Munger’s and Zimmerman’s training at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, where they studied classical acting together. Apparently, the two met when Munger posted a notice on the school activities board for a nightly improvised Shakespeare group. At the first meeting, only one person showed up: it was Zimmerman. The rest is history.
With a whole run ahead of them this August, it’s exciting to imagine just how many improvised places they’ll be taking their contagiously funny Elizabethan vibrations – and how many new fans they’ll be picking up along the way.
Unscripted Shakespeare is a part of the 2025 Edinburgh Fringe through 25 August. Get your tickets here: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/thorn-and-petal-stick-unscripted-shakespeare.